It was a crash which woke Clarke from her latest night of nightmare-filled sleep and she rolled off her bunk in seconds, already-booted feet hitting the floor as she stood up and scrambled out of her tent.

"What happened?!" she said as several dead bodies and Jasper, Jasper poor Jasper, was carried in, an arrow in his neck. She wanted to scream, wanted to check on the people she cared most about now and damn the rest, but the part of her that always looked after everything was the part that said, "Get him to the drop ship, do not take that arrow out, do you hear me?" A few people nodded, bustling him off, and she turned to Finn as he came in, allowing herself a precious few minutes to find out what had happened in the latest chapter of this endlessly bloody war.

"We were doing a patrol and they just jumped us," he breathed. He was bleeding in several places and she'd have to deal with his wounds too once Jasper was stable, but he wasn't critical and her mother's voice in her head said that critical always came first in times like these. "We didn't see them coming but we won. We won."

"You call this winning?" Clarke said, voice losing strength. "How many dead is this?"

"Three," Finn said and swallowed hard. "Three..."

"That's too many." Clarke turned away, straight into Bellamy, who wrapped her up in his arms. This had become something they did (something he did): he'd notice she was upset and he'd just hold her, offer a few moments of calm, comfort and peace in the midst of a war.

"Take a breath, go look after Jasper," he said once he'd let go of her and the noise of the camp and people panicking came rushing back into her ears. "I'll come find you later when I've dealt with this." She was so grateful she almost cried but she simply didn't. She needed him to find her, to help make this okay again.

She nodded her shaky agreement and turned away, making her way across the camp to save the life of one of her dearest friends.

Didn't her mother always say to not operate on people you were emotionally compromised by? Something about shaking hands.

Her hands didn't shake. She didn't have the luxury of not working on her friends down here. They were all her friends and Jasper needed her.

They all needed her.


It was more than twenty-four hours of hard work and no sleep later that she finally sat down on her cot, burying her face in her clean hands. Logically, they smelled like soap, but the only scent she could detect on her skin was Jasper's blood. She knew it wasn't real, rather some kind of sleep deprived hallucination, but that didn't make it pleasant and the coppery tang clung to her nostrils long after it was gone from the air.

"Hey." She wasn't sure when Bellamy had entered her tent or when he'd crouched in front of her, or when he'd taken her hands in his and held them close, the pads of his calloused thumbs rubbing against her palms. "You saved him, Clarke," he said, his deep voice low and gentle. "You're shaking..."

She hadn't realised, didn't know even now that she was. She wasn't sure why she'd be shaking, the surgery was over, Jasper was in recovery. Her mother had come from Camp Jaha to help. Why would she be shaking?

"I can't do this anymore." Oh, she was crying. That explained the shaking. "I can't. Bellamy, it's too much. Who's going to be next? Everyone is going to die and I-I can't do it, I can't watch our friends die. I can't lose any more people. They're just kids fighting a pointless war..."

"It's not pointless," he said. "It's not. It's not pointless to defend ourselves from attacks and that's exactly what we're doing. They keep attacking us."

"We're on their land, Bellamy," she said, voice shaking as hard as her hands. "We'd do the same if someone tried to take our land, kill our people..."

"We'd at least talk to them first, you know we would. We didn't try to kill their people. They tried to kill Jasper, don't you remember?" He sighed. "Clarke, do you think this would stop if we moved? What're the odds we landed on the only populated spot on Earth? Low. The odds are really damn low. There's going to be grounders wherever we go, but here? They already know us and one day they're going to figure out that we're not dying, or giving up, or leaving and they're going to want a ceasefire, maybe even peace or to be allies, because we have guns and we have determination and we're not going to give up or give in."

She took a deep but shaky breath and nodded, closing her eyes and holding on tight to his hands like if she let go of them she'd float away, or sink into the earth and disappear. "Right! Yeah... yeah." She shook her head, trying to clear it of all the negative thoughts clouding her mind, trying to simply believe Bellamy, to believe everything he said. "I should sleep."

He pulled his hands away at her words and all of a sudden she felt cold and alone again, all her calm receding with the warmth of his body. He stood up and she stretched out on her bunk on her back, closing her eyes and trying to calm again. His heavy footfalls signalled he was leaving her tent, and before she could supress it she'd said, "Bellamy?"

"Yeah?" She didn't open her eyes, not sure she'd be brave enough to ask him for what she wanted if she looked at him, if she could see his intense brown eyes gazing at her. She could tell by his voice he'd turned to look at her and she caught herself wondering how she looked stretched out on her bed in her underwear and a loose, ragged t-shirt she had to in. She wondered if he liked how she looked.

Her voice was almost too quiet to hear as she asked, "Will you stay?"

A long silence followed, so she clarified her words with, "I'm not sleeping well at the moment. I'm… one eye open, you know? Sleeping light makes me feel safe because I wake to so much as a mouse going through my tent, but... I wake a lot." She licked her lips but didn't open her eyes or look at him. She didn't want to. "If you were here with me... I might be able to sleep through the night and I... need that. I'm going insane from lack of sleep." It was the most honest she'd been in days, weeks even.

His footfalls started again, striding towards her, and she scooted to the side of her cot, up against the wall of the tent and away from the middle, leaving room for him to lie down. Her bed rocked as he sat down on it and she heard him take his boots off. It made sense, boots were hard to sleep in and they'd make his feet sore if he left them on. She'd learned that from leaving her own on, but still she did it. The bunk moved some more and she felt his shoulder knock hers as he lay down next to her. "Ow."

"What?" She still didn't look.

He made a grumbling sound. "I'm lying on the edge of the cot, the wood bit. What do you think?" Even the low grunt of his voice made her feel better.

She rolled onto her side, scooting along the cot until she was right on the edge and he shifted too, sliding into the middle.

There was a couple of moments of silence and then his grumbly voice said, "Aren't you on it now?"

"Nah," she lied.

"For fuck's sake," he said and she felt his forearm as it came to rest against her head, nudging at her skull. She opened her eyes, confusion overwhelming her desire to not admit to the fact she'd begged for a Bellamy Blake Baby Sitting Service, looking across at him in the half-light of the evening.

"What?"

"We'll take up less room if we disregard each other's personal space for a night." She didn't move, trying to figure out why he was speaking so formally and translate what he meant and that seemed to bug him because he sighed like he'd had enough of everything she'd ever done. He probably had. "And," he continued after a brief moment, "if you can feel my arms around you, I'd wager it'll help you sleep. You'll know I'm here even when you're asleep."

She moved into his arms like her body was on autopilot, like it knew what she wanted more than her mind did, and he rolled, wrapping his strong arms around her with his back to the world, protecting her from it. She didn't usually need protecting, was usually the first one to shout that she was capable of protecting herself damnit, but tonight all she wanted, all she needed - and oh, god, how she needed it tonight - was his arms around her and his bigger, stronger, tougher body protecting hers, which felt so small and frail and fragile today, battered and beaten from defending her heart from the world that kept trying to break it.

"Thank you," she said and her words slurred with tiredness, voice cracking a little.

His face pressed to the top of her head and it took her a second to realise he'd kissed her crown. She hoped her hair tasted cleaner than it felt but it probably didn't. "Just get some sleep," he said, his voice softer than usual, not its usual low grunt.

Her only reply was to fall asleep in his arms.